Interpretation of Cultural Expressions
Lecture 1
Jabberwocky – Lewis Carroll
Carroll writes a story with words that do not exist. You have to attribute your own meaning that is not there. This is part of
your imagination. You do this because you have to make it readable.
= A readerly text
Convention help us to understand a text. Conventional reading is something that we do all the time. Because of this, we can
make mistakes by using the wrong conventions. It’s not only the author that creates meaning, but also the readers. This makes
it a readerly text.
Natureingang = a beginning of a story to introduce the gloominess of the situation. It describes the state of nature; weather,
the people etc.
Epos = Jabberwocky is an epos; a hero story. A young man going out to kill the so-called monster.
Hermeneutics
- How do we make sense of texts
- How do we identify meaning
- How do we discriminate between author, text, and reader
- How can we justify our interpretations
What the words say, is not what it says; there’s meaning behind that you need to dig up. Is there a meaning worked into the
words by an author who wants you to understand something? Very common in modernist literature: texts that need
explanation. In a museum, because of our tendency to paraphrase, we immediately look at the text next to the art, looking for
explanation. We do that the whole time, paraphrasing what something means.
Truth
- Hermeneutics as a way of deciphering divine meaning
- Excavating the inner though from words
- Mediation and translation
- Explanation of fate and guidance in life
Example: The Bible
Question: Is there such a thing as a meaning behind the words?
Understanding
- Connecting the dots in the text
- Integration into meaningful whole
- Connecting to your own inner world
- Crossing distance in time and space
Methodology
Division between arts and sciences
- Objective, systematic, neutral, technical, quantifiable, empirical knowledge
- Subjective, incidental, engaged, holistic, qualified, sensitive knowledge
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,Question
- Is disengaged, objective knowledge attainable?
- Can subjective knowledge be scientific or is it a matter of taste (e.g. anyone has a right to his/her own truth, just
like you own your identity?)
How do we know something is objective? Has not all knowledge turned into something subjective by being in your head in
your own understanding? Is it then possible to reach autonomous objective knowledge? Attributing meaning to numbers
makes it non-neutral anymore. Even though numbers are supposedly on that objective side, the quantifiable.
Hermeneutics and the Romantic Turn
1. Creating access to otherness using imagination
2. The possibility of world literature (Goethe)
3. A shared sense of humanity: merging souls
4. Imagination over historical factual research; novel versus encyclopedia
Sophisticating theory
Issues
1. Facts are meaningless without interpretation (e.g. the day scores of COVID 19)
2. Sense-impressions call for interpretation (e.g. feeling unwell in F, D, NL)
3. Understanding is not only mental, but also physical (e.g. hunger, thirst etc.)
4. What is consciousness, what is truth, wat is language?
5. The function of stories; the working of metaphor
6. Author – text – reader: three approaches to interpretation. Intended meaning, ‘Death of the author’, reader-
response, expectation horizons (e.g. different contexts shaping each other)
Lecture 2
Narratology
CONTENT
Production – distribution – reception
=
Author – text – reader
Structuralism
Looking at how a text is made by an author. What means does he have to his disposal to create meaning? How does
he make text? What does text consist of? Structural relationship between author, text, and reader.
Structuralism = a theory of how structural elements in a story create structural meaning so that meaning is not being
established incidentally, but we are able to predict structure into which the words are put. So, structuralism is de study of
normality. And normality is an ideological concept. Allows us to agree or disagree. The problem with normality is that you
don’t notice it, because it’s normal.
Making sense of a text is trying to unnormalize the text. Trying to see what the structure normality in it is, and ask
questions about it to find more insight or a deeper meaning in the text.
Classic Narratology
All content comes in shape of narrations
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, A. Author to Text
1. Narrations produce the author rather than reflect one
“How does it help me to tell the story by using a certain type of speech?”
- Direct speech: all knowing narrator; I narrator (You suppose all the information you get in the text is valuable)
- Indirect speech: paraphrase by narrator
- Free indirect speech: internal voice (“could she leave now?”
2. Barthes: Attempts to write a grammar of stories
“Barthes is trying to understand text like we understand sentences. Sentences follow grammar rules to be correct. He tried to
do this with stories, narratives. What elements are there in the narrative and how they are being used and what is the
‘grammar’ of stories. Fundamental stories that explain what is going on in the story”
- Actions – function (= the things that happen and what their function in the story is)
- Actors – subject, object, helper, opponent
- Setting
3. Genette: levels
“Author chooses the wording, creates his own vocabulary. As a reader you can fall in love with that. Authors you like to read,
you most probably connect to the way they word things. Depends on taste. Creates an identity of the author, and sense of
taste. Creates an identity of the author, and sense of taste, beauty, liking. Aesthetics, which is an important thing. Taste
creates individuality and connection.
- Narration – the wording
- Recit – the story in the text: the elements (= how the story is put into motion. How it is told. To a large extent a technical
thing)
- History – the abstract world of the story (= that which you would speak of when you are telling someone else about a book
you’ve read)
4. Time spans
“Books can flash forward, back, ellipses; time is not lineair. The rhythm tells something about how the story works.
Traditional way of analyzing story telling.
- Ellipse / fast – slow / flash back – forward
- Sequence
- Frequency
5. Character Typology: hero, villain, etc
- Types of characters. Often a hero villain, helper etc.
- In telling a story, you use ‘standard’ structural aspects.
- We as humans love that repetition
6. Focalization: perspectives
7. Propp: Genre Typology
B. Text to Reader
Theoretical movement UK called New Criticism. One of the most famous people from this movement is T.S. Elliott. What
they emphasize in their analysis and les us to do close reading. Finding nuances in the text that are meaningful.
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